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House Hansard - 141

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 5, 2022 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 141 - Dec/5/22
Mr. Adam van Koeverden (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and to the Minister of Sport, Lib.)
  • Dec/5/22 6:44:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I first want to thank my hon. colleague for her question, her leadership and her attention to this very important issue. I would also like to thank the other members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women for the important work they are doing in studying the issue of safe sport for women and girls in Canada. I had the privilege of joining one of the meetings. I paid attention today to those meetings. The testimony was both extremely moving and terribly important for us all to listen to. I want to commend the courageous athletes who continue to tell their stories about the abuse they have suffered. I want them to know that we hear them; we see them and we absolutely believe them. I want to be clear that anyone who is a victim or witness to a criminal act should report that incident to the police immediately. In reality, this is a deeply personal issue for me. The objective of creating a safer sport free from abuse was my main motivation for entering the world of politics. As a society, we in Canada have a shared responsibility to promote a safe sporting environment for everyone. Our government responded to calls from Canadian athletes for an independent, centralized mechanism for violations of any provisions of the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport. The Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, or OSIC, was created in June under the leadership of Sarah-Ève Pelletier, who is a former member of the national artistic swimming team, a member of the Quebec bar and an accredited civil mediator. This office was created to end the culture of silence, to help provide a reliable mechanism for reporting abuse and mistreatment, and to ensure that victims are heard and supported. By April 1, 2023, all national sport organizations must sign on to the abuse-free sport program, which includes OSIC services. This is a condition of receiving funding from the Government of Canada. As of December 1, 2022, some 23 organizations have signed on, including Hockey Canada and Gymnastics Canada. Some have questioned OSIC's independence. Just like any administrative tribunal or court of justice supported financially by the federal government, from the Supreme Court of Canada to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, OSIC is an independent entity. Earlier I spoke to the personal nature of this concern. It was about seven years ago that I retired from sport. I had a long career in sport. I went to four Olympics for Canada, and indeed witnessed many things that I wish never happened. In 2016, the then minister of sport asked me to be part of a working group to develop a system to address the maltreatment in sport that was occurring. There first needed to be a universal code of conduct. We made recommendations to the federal government at that time. Those recommendations included having a universal code of conduct that was mandatory for all national sport organizations, ensuring that the system was fully funded by the federal government, as the Supreme Court is, and ensuring that it was independent of the government entirely. It is true that those things are the case today. Given that sport is a shared jurisdiction in Canada, we, along with provincial and territorial colleagues, should all be working together on this. In August 2022, building on the Red Deer declaration signed in February 2019, ministers agreed to work toward establishing an independent third party mechanisms in their jurisdictions for allegations of maltreatment in sport—
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Context: House Hansard - 141 - Dec/5/22
Mr. Adam van Koeverden
  • Dec/5/22 6:49:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I once again want to commend the member from the Bloc Québécois for her attention to this important issue and concern. I also want to commend the other members of the status of women committee for their hard work on this issue. Absolutely no solution is off the table for me, the Minister of Sport, the government and all members of the House. We absolutely condemn violence, maltreatment and abuse in sport. We absolutely condemn what we heard in the testimony that was so troubling and moving. There is a solution for this. It lies within our power and obligation to step forward and make sure these stories continue to be told. We look forward to the recommendations from the committee following this important study. We thank its members again for this important work. I want to say it again. Absolutely no solution is off the table for the Minister of Sport, me and the government to ensure that sport continues and is safer in the future.
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